Have a Math Game Day

Do your children hate worksheets as much as my son?

He groans and grumbles, takes an inordinate amount of time to complete them, and has shed numerous tears over them.  It only took me a year and half to figure out that I was beating my head against a brick wall by expecting my son to complete worksheets.  Now that he is able to do more of his schoolwork independently, worksheets have created complete chaos to our schedule.

For years I've been collecting free resources through free printables, notebooking, and lapbooking, but every time I present them to my son he turns up his little nose.  So to break up the monotony of worksheets I came up with Math Game Day.

He gets to choose either Dominoes, dice, playing cards without the face cards, or Cribbage.

With Dominoes my son picks one, turns it over, then writes the numbers and adds, subtracts, multiplies, or divides.  The same thing is done with the playing cards, but I make two piles with the cards.  Cribbage is a card game my mother taught my sisters and I when we were very young.  It’s a wonderful game for practicing math facts.

The dice are more commonly chosen and are his favorite because he loves throwing them.  We start with just two dice for about 5 min.  He throws them, writes, and computes.  Then I'll add two more dice to the game.  For another 5 min. my son throws, writes down combinations of two number problems.  Finally, I add the last two dice for three number problems.

I keep this “play” time short so he doesn’t get bored, and we occasionally spice things up with odd number of dice.  He responds so much better to this kind of math.

Do you have any other ideas for creative, fun learning?

photo credit: Lyn Lomasi